Why We Need Better Angels

 

I’ve been trying to figure out what to write about these first weeks of the Trump administration and I must admit that I am dumbfounded.  Where are the better angels of American nature?

 

The idea of a disbanded USAID flies in the face of every principle of not only US soft power, and influence, but optics..  Although there have been numerous instances of fraud and abuse, closing the agency is not the solution.  Moreover, the firings of inspectors general aggravates the potential for skullduggery.

 

USAID should be reformed, not closed.  Foreign aid is an essential component in the exercise of our power and influence in the world.   The abandonment of it will lead to Russia or China stepping into the void.  Vacuums only work in Hoovers.

It is not certain that the State Department can do a better job; seems like Marco Rubio has enough on his plate, like diplomacy, world peace, embassies, and foreign policy.

 

After World War II, the Marshall plan bankrolled the recovery of a devastated Europe, the tattered remnants of 12 years of bloodletting and destruction unparalleled in the world history.

Countries like France, Greece and Turkey were in ruins and Germany, nothing but bombed out cities and starving people.  

 

This post war time was “a big beautiful,” opportunity, for Stalin to step in and expand the Soviet Union, an entity at the time that struck fear in the heart of every anti-communist. It was a time of national hysteria.  A time when Winston Churchill came to America as a guest of Truman and made his famous 1947 remarks in Fulton Missouri: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended on the continent.”

 

Churchill knew that Europe needed help to recover from the bitter economic devastation of World War, just as he knew Britain needed help to fight Hitler.

 

Various plans of people like Henry Morgenthau, Jr., FDR’s treasury secretary, understandably wanted to deindustrialize Germany and morph it into a strictly agricultural society of small farmers, incapable of ever waging war again.  He looked at the interregnum between World War I and II and determined that Germany would repeat its militaristic past, if allowed to reindustrialize.  This plan, very controversial, was scrapped.  Good thing it was.

 

Harry Truman and Dean Acheson understood that foreign aid to Europe would be essential for American security as well as a counterbalance to the malign forces of Soviet Communism.  It would help contain communism, the theory of the earlier great statesman George Kennan.

 

Foreign aid in 1945 was a peacetime extension of the Rooseveltian “great arsenal of democracy” that kept Britain in the war against Hitler.  The post war world order of pax Americana kept great powers away from war for 70 years.

 

Imagine if Lend Lease and aid to Great Britain in 1940 had been cancelled when England fought alone?  Imagine had Donald Trump been president in 1940? Or that other populist America Firster, Charles Lindbergh?   If Donald Trump had been president in 1945?  

 

Now, having said that, I think Donald Trump will not destroy the Union.  I do not think he will send out black shirted secret police in jackboots to knock on doors in the middle of the night to drag away political opponents.  I do not think he will shut down newspapers and arrest journalists.  He may sue them.  He’s very good at suing people, and it will take resources to combat him, but there are powerful forces growing against Trumpism; the courts will challenge his illegalities, despite the upside-down flags of ideologues like Justice Alito.

 

The Democrats are in disarray after a disastrous election.  Now they have to consider why that happened.  Was it the message?  Was it disinformation?  Was it social media?  Was it that people get their information from unverified sources?  Was it that people felt left behind?  Was it $9.00 for eggs?  Was it the decline of local journalism?  Was it a poor Democratic candidate? Was it incumbency fatigue?  Was it Why We Need Better Angels.

 

I’ve been trying to figure out what to write about these first weeks of the Trump administration and I must admit that I am dumbfounded.  Where are the better angels of American nature?

 

The idea of a disbanded USAID flies in the face of every principle of not only US soft power, and influence, but optics..  Although there have been numerous instances of fraud and abuse, closing the agency is not the solution.  Moreover, the firings of inspectors general aggravates the potential for skullduggery.

 

USAID should be reformed, not closed.  Foreign aid is an essential component in the exercise of our power and influence in the world.   The abandonment of it will lead to Russia or China stepping into the void.  Vacuums only work in Hoovers.

It is not certain that the State Department can do a better job; seems like Marco Rubio has enough on his plate, like diplomacy, world peace, embassies, and foreign policy.

 

After World War II, the Marshall plan bankrolled the recovery of a devastated Europe, the tattered remnants of 12 years of bloodletting and destruction unparalleled in the world history.

Countries like France, Greece and Turkey were in ruins and Germany, nothing but bombed out cities and starving people.  

 

This post war time was “a big beautiful,” opportunity, for Stalin to step in and expand the Soviet Union, an entity at the time that struck fear in the heart of every anti-communist. It was a time of national hysteria.  A time when Winston Churchill came to America as a guest of Truman and made his famous 1947 remarks in Fulton Missouri: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended on the continent.”

 

Churchill knew that Europe needed help to recover from the bitter economic devastation of World War, just as he knew Britain needed help to fight Hitler.

 

Various plans of people like Henry Morgenthau, Jr., FDR’s treasury secretary, understandably wanted to deindustrialize Germany and morph it into a strictly agricultural society of small farmers, incapable of ever waging war again.  He looked at the interregnum between World War I and II and determined that Germany would repeat its militaristic past, if allowed to reindustrialize.  This plan, very controversial, was scrapped.  Good thing it was.

 

Harry Truman and Dean Acheson understood that foreign aid to Europe would be essential for American security as well as a counterbalance to the malign forces of Soviet Communism.  It would help contain communism, the theory of the earlier great statesman George Kennan.

 

Foreign aid in 1945 was a peacetime extension of the Rooseveltian “great arsenal of democracy” that kept Britain in the war against Hitler.  The post war world order of pax Americana kept great powers away from war for 70 years.

 

Imagine if Lend Lease and aid to Great Britain in 1940 had been cancelled when England fought alone?  Imagine had Donald Trump been president in 1940? Or that other populist America Firster, Charles Lindbergh?   If Donald Trump had been president in 1945?  

 

Now, having said that, I think Donald Trump will not destroy the Union.  I do not think he will send out black shirted secret police in jackboots to knock on doors in the middle of the night to drag away political opponents.  I do not think he will shut down newspapers and arrest journalists.  He may sue them.  He’s very good at suing people, and it will take resources to combat him, but there are powerful forces growing against Trumpism; the courts will challenge his illegalities, despite the upside-down flags of ideologues like Justice Alito.

 

The Democrats are in disarray after a disastrous election.  Now they have to consider why that happened.  Was it the message?  Was it disinformation?  Was it social media?  Was it that people get their information from unverified sources?  Was it that people felt left behind?  Was it $9.00 for eggs?  Was it the decline of local journalism?  Was it a poor Democratic candidate? Was it incumbency fatigue?  Was it DEI?  Did Biden stay too long?  Biden did get some things right.  But people do not like feeble leaders.  Biden gave that impression at the end.

 

 

Was it that they lied to us about him?  Take your pick.  Maybe all of the above. The list is not exhaustive.

 

Let’s see what Trump does. He has hit the ground running.  I suspect this term will shape up just like the first term anyway.  Largely Incompetent.  People forget. Memories are short. Trump does understand mass psychology.  Reptilian self-interest, the appeal to fear.  That people do not give a fig about others, only themselves.  And yes, there are people like that, but there are many who are not.  

 

Those with better angels.

 

2024 Ends with mixed reviews.

This is a funny time of year.   The season is supposed to inspire joy, and sometimes it does.  Other times it produces anxiety and fear.   The fear of impending mortality and illness. Living in a fundamentally uncaring universe.  If we do not care about ourselves, no one else does.  The difference between belief and knowledge are two different things.  Faith is belief in the unprovable, knowledge is based upon fact.  Ergo, the difference between the increasing irreconcilability between science and religion.  Religion requires faith.  For those that have faith, life might be easier, but perhaps delusional.  Whatever floats your boat.

We had faith Joe Biden was ok, but facts proved otherwise.  The knowledge was hidden from us by his handlers, to the detriment of the Democratic party and of the nation.

Joe Biden is clearly decrepit, and in that condition, condemned the Democratic party to at least two years in the wilderness, now either hoping that Trump fails, or that if he succeeds, not justifying their misgivings about a corrupt individual slithering by, further enriching himself and his minions. Father time has not been kind to Biden.  A basically decent man, suffering enormous personal losses and pain, finally achieving his goal of becoming President of the United States, passing some important legislation such as the CHIPS act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and pushing the nation toward a greener future with a world-beating, full employment economy.  But Biden diminished his legacy by staying around too long and even provoking controversy by pardoning his son.  Given the circumstances of a vengeful successor though, it is an understandable move.  What father would want to see his son go to prison for what Hunter did?  He is not a mass murderer or even a regular murderer-- just a confused, possibly advantage-seeking dilletante recovering addict whose father happened to be the most powerful man on the planet.  Still, the GOP MAGA groups who have condemned him, have their fair share of black sheep and hypocrites.  We know who they are, so let’s not go there.

 

Those of us who hope that Trump does not fail for good of the nation, are cautiously pessimistic about the future, but as Al Smith once famously said, “let’s look at the record.”  Will an unbound second term be better?

Governments do not run well without bureaucrats, or as Trump and Bannon (both convicts) would have it, “The Deep State.”  We need sailors to sail the ship.

On the foreign front, Biden has given pretty much everything the Ukrainians need to fight the Russians.  Perhaps some of the aid could have come earlier, but it is not certain it would have made a difference in this long slog of attrition.  The West is using the Ukrainians as proxies to elide Putin’s revanchist dreams of restoring the Soviet Union.  That is not going to happen, but his desperation moves are quite annoying.  If he gobbles up Ukraine, he will be stuck with a very angry populace, not unlike other occupation forces and perhaps continual guerilla warfare.  The Russian economy is suffering, and Putin knows it; so in desperation, he is using North Korean troops to fight his battles, probably to avoid draft riots led by Russian mothers not wanting their sons fed into a “meat grinder,” already the cause of what US and UK intelligence estimates of 700,000 Russians killed and wounded.  Europeans need to step it up if Trump backs off.  The German and French economies are not in good shape, but they need to quickly rearm to ensure European stability.  They are more worried about Europe than Trump who, for the time being, is concerned fulfilling his promise to deport dog and cat eating Haitians, who, among others, are polluting American blood, whatever that is.

In the Middle East, Israel has shown that it is a true warrior nation.  The exploding pager—walkie talkie offensive, the decimation of Hezbollah, the take down of Iran, the targeted assassinations of crucial terrorist leadership shows who the superpower is in the neighborhood.  This after many years of fear among Jews that Israel was on the edge of destruction, demonstrated by the weakness of the October7th Hamas attacks. Things might be on the upswing.

So let’s watch the fireworks on Biscayne Bay and herald in a better 2025.

 

 

 

 

American Reptile.

 

 

Someone said that Kamala Harris did not do enough to pass the message to voters.  The problem was that she did, but it was the wrong message.  And here in Florida, prominent democrats are trying float ideas attempting to revive a moribund party.  At this stage of the game, turning Florida blue is a Sisyphean enterprise. Democrats, let’s roll that rock up the hill anyway. Apathy is the worst enemy of democracy.

 

The woke mentality of the left was given a severe thrashing and it was the perception of most voters that they had, rightly, enough of cancel culture, with universities cancelling those of opposing points of view from the traditional left, DEI culture and the general feeling, among other things, that some trans rights were intruding on both traditional culture and common sense.

 

The Trump campaign hammered video of a clearly masculine, hairy, arm-pitted, grotesquely tattooed trans basketball player, twice the size of the opposition flexing his/her muscles to a group of befuddled, intimidated girls.  This was a blatant, but effective call to baser voter instincts. But that is what Trump does. Reptilian arguments stoke fear.

 

It really does not take too much thought to understand that trans women do not have the same physical attributes of female athletes, and that thought was conveyed at the ballot box. Sally playing with George (Georgina) is not playing well in flyover country or in Florida (fly to country.)

 

Of course, that is an exaggeration and an emotional argument which many believe would discriminate against people with alternative lifestyles.  That discrimination should not be countenanced.

 

Additionally, the pro-abortion movement was not sufficiently thought of as a reason for people to abandon their feelings about paying $8 for eggs, instead of $4.00 no matter how grassfed or organic they be.  And a majority did not care about Trump’s mendacity, sexual abuse, and misogyny.  Nor did they care about threats to democracy or the attempted coup on January 6, 2021.  

 

They cared about the border for sure.  Earlier generations of immigrants always became “American” enough to reject later generations.  It’s history. American history.  Chinese, Japanese, Italians, Irish, Jews all suffered rejection at first.  Did they threaten jobs of the people already here? Probably.  But America thrived with immigrants and will do so again.  Just keep the criminals out.  Trump mischaracterized immigrants to his advantage.  People did not believe Kamala’s protestations. She bore the brunt of the MAGA attack and bore the responsibility for the Biden immigration policy.

 

What does that say about America in the 21^st century?   We really do not know.  Is the MAGA movement the slippery slope to authoritarianism?  Is this, as Putin thinks, the decline of the American world order?   I like to think not, judging by worse things we have come through as a nation.  Civil War, Great Depression, World Wars I and II, Viet-Nam, the Cold War etc. etc. 

 

People who fear authoritarianism are correct to do so.  Authoritarian bent leaders select lackeys and knuckleheads to serve in the government because they have nothing else to recommend them, save the leader, and will be completely loyal to him, or lose their jobs.   Trump learned his lesson about having people smarter than he is around him.  Dimwits do not write books trashing the boss. Kim Jung Un has similar hiring habits but says “you’re fired” in a less salubrious manner.

 

Trump’s cabinet picks so far with the perhaps the exception of Rubio, are not serious.  They are intended as a loyalty test for Republican senators.  Previously, the loyalty test was simply saying the election was stolen.  Now it is whether an incompetent dunce, no matter how unqualified, can pass confirmation muster and perhaps to determine which GOP senator will be relegated to Trumpian purgatory for not following the leader.

 

For those who forgot how chaotic Trump’s first term was and voted for him because they did not like the Biden administration, are you scared yet?   Stay tuned. 

Be careful what you wish for.

 

Well, well, well.  The election is over.  Kamala gave a graceful concession speech, unlike Donald Trump would have, certainly, appealing to the better angels of our nature, unity, freedom, praising justice and congratulating Trump on his victory.  Trump got his justice last night, from  clearly enthusiastic millions of his supporters.   Jack Smith will go away, and Trump will not.

 

The mystery to us Democrats, despite the howls of pundits is what caused so lopsided a victory for Trump?  What was it that Democrats did not see that a majority of voters in the country did?  Was it jobs, the cost of living, racism, gender bias, foreign interference, social media, a low-information electorate, rage against cultural elites, immigration?  Or was it all these things, melded with years of propaganda from FOX news, and Rupert Murdoch’s malign influence on the information cycle?  Was it lies becoming truth?  Was it Orwellian verisimilitude?

 

Some of my liberal friends think the world is coming to an end, or at the least, the American experiment will now go down in a whirlpool of authoritarian power and revenge, presided over by a convict, rapist, and truculent liar?  Maybe.  I told them not to take it so hard. Get a life. Turn off MSNBC and read a novel or do some navel contemplation.

 

It would behoove those who think the sky is falling, to reflect on some aspects of American history.  That we have survived , among many other disasters, a Civil War, two World Wars, the Korean War,  a plethora of equally malodorous con men, racists, bigots and scoundrels, including, but not limited to, Father Coughlin, George Wallace, Joseph McCarthy, the House Un American Activity Committee, Communist witch hunts, backlists, Atomic spies, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, misbegotten wars in Viet Nam and Iraq, The Great Depression, The Great Recession,  Jim Crow, slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, Segregation, and  failed presidents like James Buchanan, followed finally by Abraham Lincoln, who saved the Union.  Then assassination.  And don’t forget, after Lincoln, came Andrew Johnson, a racist who was impeached, just like Trump, but stayed in office by just one vote in the Senate doing what he could to sabotage reconstruction.

 

Some of us feel like we have been cheated out of seeing Trump marched away in a complexion-matching orange jump suit  and handcuffs  on his way sharing a cell with one of his insurrectionist constituents, the guy with the fur hat, outrageous tats and horns who now, among all the others, Trump promises to pardon for trying to  overthrow the government and hang Mike Pence for doing his constitutional duty. 

 

Now, Kamala Harris will preside over the Senate when the votes are certified.  Just as did Al Gore when he lost to W.  There will be no cries from Trump’s minions, since this election will be deemed Trumplistically “perfect,” Why? 

 

 

 

 

 Be careful what you wish for.

 

Well, well, well.  The election is over.  Kamala gave a graceful concession speech, unlike Donald Trump would have, certainly, appealing to the better angels of our nature, unity, freedom, praising justice and congratulating Trump on his victory.  Trump got his justice last night, from  clearly enthusiastic millions of his supporters.   Jack Smith will go away, and Trump will not.

 

The mystery to us Democrats, despite the howls of pundits is what caused so lopsided a victory for Trump?  What was it that Democrats did not see that a majority of voters in the country did?  Was it jobs, the cost of living, racism, gender bias, foreign interference, social media, a low-information electorate, rage against cultural elites, immigration?  Or was it all these things, melded with years of propaganda from FOX news, and Rupert Murdoch’s malign influence on the information cycle?  Was it lies becoming truth?  Was it Orwellian verisimilitude?

 

Some of my liberal friends think the world is coming to an end, or at the least, the American experiment will now go down in a whirlpool of authoritarian power and revenge, presided over by a convict, rapist, and truculent liar?  Maybe.  I told them not to take it so hard. Get a life. Turn off MSNBC and read a novel or do some navel contemplation.

 

It would behoove those who think the sky is falling, to reflect on some aspects of American history.  That we have survived , among many other disasters, a Civil War, two World Wars, the Korean War,  a plethora of equally malodorous con men, racists, bigots and scoundrels, including, but not limited to, Father Coughlin, George Wallace, Joseph McCarthy, the House Un American Activity Committee, Communist witch hunts, backlists, Atomic spies, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, misbegotten wars in Viet Nam and Iraq, The Great Depression, The Great Recession,  Jim Crow, slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, Segregation, and  failed presidents like James Buchanan, followed finally by Abraham Lincoln, who saved the Union.  Then assassination.  And don’t forget, after Lincoln, came Andrew Johnson, a racist who was impeached, just like Trump, but stayed in office by just one vote in the Senate doing what he could to sabotage reconstruction.

 

Some of us feel like we have been cheated out of seeing Trump marched away in a complexion-matching orange jump suit  and handcuffs  on his way sharing a cell with one of his insurrectionist constituents, the guy with the fur hat, outrageous tats and horns who now, among all the others, Trump promises to pardon for trying to  overthrow the government and hang Mike Pence for doing his constitutional duty. 

 

Now, Kamala Harris will preside over the Senate when the votes are certified.  Just as did Al Gore when he lost to W.  There will be no cries from Trump’s minions, since this election will be deemed Trumplistically “perfect,” Why? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because you dummies, he fucking won.

 

I am exhausted after nine years of Donald Trump.  And now another four?  Now we are sentenced to four years ourselves.

 

I promised myself that if Trump won, I would not watch cable news or read a newspaper for four years.  I would not listen to journalists wringing their hands about what the Democrats did wrong enough to lose the election.  Or how all those voters could be fooled and vote for someone who did not represent their values.  Or how they drank the Kool Aid.  Au contraire.  The voters got what they wanted.  Trump represents their values.  They overlooked his criminality, his self-enrichment, his disdain for the rule of law.   They got what they wanted, what they wished for.  So as the saying goes, be careful about those wishes. 

Because you dummies, he fucking won.

 

I am exhausted after nine years of Donald Trump.  And now another four?  Now we are sentenced to four years ourselves.

 

I promised myself that if Trump won, I would not watch cable news or read a newspaper for four years.  I would not listen to journalists wringing their hands about what the Democrats did wrong enough to lose the election.  Or how all those voters could be fooled and vote for someone who did not represent their values.  Or how they drank the Kool Aid.  Au contraire.  The voters got what they wanted.  Trump represents their values.  They overlooked his criminality, his self-enrichment, his disdain for the rule of law.   They got what they wanted, what they wished for.  So as the saying goes, be careful about those wishes.

Eating the Cats and Dogs

Do not worry about the Cats and Dogs.  Vote.

 

It is manifestly inconceivable, yet here we are on the cusp of the election with the possibility of a depraved scoundrel who has perverted the American experiment with a good chance of being re- elected President of the United States of America.

 

I have voted in every presidential election since 1960, and I have never experienced America in such turmoil, existential angst, a mixture of rage and fear. Even during Vietnam. Even during Watergate. Nine years of Trump since he came down on the golden escalator.  Enough already.

 

On the one hand, Trumpists believe that their cult of personality has the keys to saving the republic.  That despite all the hate and fear mongering emanating from his supporters, that Kamala Harris, a woman, a black woman, represents more of a threat to the nation than Trump.  Even if one thinks that Harris lacks the gravitas to be president, one must  cling to the hope that she will be able to restore a sense of normalcy to our politics.  Yes, Biden hung around too long and she was anointed without going through the primary process.  And yes, they gaslighted us by saying old Joe was fine.  And yes maybe there could have been a more perfect candidate. But those possibilities pale in comparison to the threat of Trump’s disrespect for the rule of law, for the constitution. No other argument need be advanced.  For God’s sake, he tried to overturn the election, to provoke a coup d’etat.

 

Surreal that Trump, after shattering all norms of political and civil discourse, after demonizing half of America could be returned to the White House, threatening to deport 12 million people.  No one can even understand what a disruptive force that would be to almost every walk of life.  Trumpers do not dare talk about what a budget buster that would be. How many familial bonds would be shattered.  Children would again be separated from their parents and watch their mothers who gave birth to them in America, be dragged away from their citizen children, while the Joseph Goebbels of Trumpworld, Stephen Miller, executes his heartless, compassionless agenda while “Haitian immigrants feast on cats and dogs.” That said, the border should be secured, and criminals should be sent packing.  Harris has said she will correct that error.

 

Putin and XI and Kim Jong Un are rooting for Trump.  Our NATO allies are not.

 

Apologists for Trump such as Ben Shapiro, divine that Trump will not do what he says, that he only says things to gain leverage.  “Watch what he does, not what he says,” says Shapiro.   The problem is that not believing a proto fascist is dangerous.  41 of the 44 high government officials who worked for him, including a four-star Marine general, John Kelly, and Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff say that he is unfit, dangerous and unhinged, unable even to understand a briefing.  These are serious nonpartisan 

people.  And the advisors he selects this time will be sycophants.  Trump will be unbound.  Heaven help us.

Church, Tribes and State 2024.

  

 

My father told me once, quoting Disraeli, that “the secret to success is constancy of purpose.”

Well, if this election cycle is successful, it will have succeeded in driving Americans mad.  And I mean mad in the bonkers sense, not the angry sense as is commonly misused in American parlance.

 

Chiefly, the assault on our senses by the media, social networks, and our friends, some of whom have become so deranged by the onslaught of opinion, misinformation, disinformation and rumor, we have algorithmically relegated to the trash bin, among solicitations from Amazon, Vitamin Shoppe and LA Fitness.  We have set our email systems to tune them out.

 

I do not know how to make sense of the motivations of those Americans who still support MAGA Republicans, although I have been fed a diet of many opinions by journalists, friends and even clergy.  Clergy have not much else to ruminate about these days since most of them can no longer argue, except to true believers, that God or some facsimile thereof, still exists.  I think the most recent information reflects that only 50% of the public has expressed certainty that God is still up there on a cloud answering our prayers, his white beard festooning the heavens.

 

In view of the fact that a majority of the founding fathers were deists rejecting the efficacy of prayer, but believing in some form of divine creation, but non-intervention in human affairs, it is even more difficult to discern why evangelicals and other fundamentalists, including conservative Catholics, believe in all the recent steps taken by the current Supreme Court as some form of progress in the 1789 constitutional experiment. 

 

Abortion is one of the issues advanced by religious fundamentalists.  That issue has riven the country, and although Donald Trump, as a candidate who lost the popular vote by three million in 2016, appointed three religious zealots to the Supreme Court who lied to congress in their confirmation hearings and later overturned abortion rights that had been in place for over 52 years, resulting in life threatening social consequences. That Trump really had no popular mandate did not disturb him or Mitch McConnell a bit.

 

Religion (tribalism, I use the term interchangeably)) has prospered in this country because of the wall of separation between church and state, not in spite of it.  There exists no state religion, as in Europe, the flight from which was a guiding ideal of the pilgrims when they landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. That freedom was later affirmed by the founders.  Massachusetts and Maryland and Rhode Island, for example, were settled by different religious factions.  But back then there was no national consensus, no modern exchange of information, no telegraph, no internet exposing people to differing points of view.  There were local newspapers, but they did not widely circulate.

 

The irony of the separation of church and state being under attack by fundamentalists lays waste to the ideal that religion has been beneficial to our polity.  Yes, there has been benefit, in social order and morality, but these days, on balance, it is challenging to accept that it is a positive force.  It is too subject to manipulation by unscrupulous politicians who have no sincere religious beliefs, but instead, are guided by transactional agendas.  

 

I am clinging to the hope that the American public will not fall for the siren call of a charlatan who has fooled them once.  The electoral college is another creation of 1789 that compromised democratic ideals to slave states which, among other rationales, reasoning that the bible conferred authority to enslave other human beings.  As a result, about 80 years after the founding, a great civil war tore at the sinews of the nation, partially to cure the biblical notion that slavery was endorsed by a divinity. Lincoln himself did not subscribe to traditional Christian beliefs, but instead to a complex philosophy of rationalism and fatalism, allowing him to evolve and eventually eschew the doctrinal justification of slavery existing in the old and new Testaments (as have some modern theologians who now define slavery differently.)

 

Let us not think that religion or tribalism did not play a part in strongly contributing to that war, and many other wars, crusades, pogroms and inquisitions as well, including the inescapable notion that if Jews were Muslims or Muslims were Jews there would be no war in the Middle East.  And take it a step further. No Holocaust predicated on 2000 years of liturgy that Jews killed Christ.                                                                                                   

Solving the Mystery of Donald Trump

 “I don’t understand how anyone can support Donald Trump.  How can people be that stupid? How can people vote against their own interests?”

There is no mystery.  Donald Trump is no mystery at all.

Anger, frustration and fear are blowing in the wind; or else Donald Trump would have disappeared years ago. We know that.  But fear is the sine qua non of button pressing, the go to argument for persuasion.  Or for anyone.  Almost anyone who wants to win an argument or pass a point of view.

 When I was trying cases before juries, the most persuasive arguments were to what the noted trial lawyer Don Keenan emphasized in his book, “The Reptile,” was fear. That book became a phenomenon in legal circles, virtually assuring that a larger verdict would be forthcoming if appropriately utilized in the right case.

The philosophy of the book is that juries or people do not really care what happens to others, but instead, care about themselves in the context of a community. A tribal ethos of self-preservation, an evolutionary protection. And for a long time, it worked in primitive hunter-gatherer societies.  In the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of years of humankind there has been only ten thousand years since the dawn of agriculture, an evolutionary nanosecond to adapt to a civil society. Our genetic makeup does not work that fast.

About five thousand years ago, there arose a priestly class, arrogating to itself the power to control its peers by manipulating fear of divine anger and retribution.  These priests quickly learned how to usurp the previously direct individual connection primitives had with the spirit world, say, for example, dancing around a fire to comfort their fear of enemies, of famine, of the elements, of a harsh and unforgiving world of predator and prey.

Now the primitives could be told how to live their lives, pay homage to priests, and live in a community governed by an organized religion devoted to protecting them from harm, assuming they lived according to the rules. Among those rules was a rule book, (the bible) tribal markings, brandings, nose rings, circumcision, denoting those who belonged to the tribe and denoting outsiders as hostile, worthy of exile, death or even extermination.

One need only look to the blood-soaked twentieth century to see the workings of fear.  Fear of Jews, Communists, Blacks, Non-Catholics, Catholics, Asians, Non-Aryans, Socialists, Liberals, Atheists, Protestants, pick one. If one goes back five hundred years or five thousand years, it does not matter.  Humanity is rife with fear. 

So, when people ask why Donald Trump has been successful in being elected to the Presidency of the United States of America and are confounded by his still large following, the answer is fear.  Trump has mastered the art of manipulating fear and turning it into a cult, the religion of Trumpism. Fear of others.

When Trump talks about eliminating “vermin” from our midst, that statement alone should have been disqualifying.   But it has not been.  Because people fear vermin.  People visualize rodents as loathsome, just as they did when Dr. Goebbels portrayed Jews as rats in his propaganda.  Just as members of his tribe did nothing to speak out against the calumny.

So, Trump has become a high priest, a pied piper to his followers. Just drink the potion, the snake oil. You cannot argue with religion.  In a way, most religions are cultish.  They leave their initial cultishness behind with the passage of time.  The older the religion becomes, the more acceptable it becomes, the less of a cult it is, the more it assuages fear.

People adhering to strict tribal customs perhaps do themselves and their community a service, but in rejecting the more widely acceptable customs of a society also isolate themselves from a more fearful, cosmopolitan (yes I use that word) point of view.  More accepting of others. They inhabit a more insular world, more obvious in their differences and thus more of a target for hatred and prejudice.  The answer to that is not clear. I imagine the answer could be a more tolerant society.  But that is rare, and it seems  that more illiberal societies arise in a time of immense technological and economic change, a more challenging time.  A time more susceptible to Trumpian demagoguery and fear.  Trump has mastered the art of manipulating fear.  The fear of change. The need for scapegoats.

So, Trump is no mystery at all.  Trump is fear itself.  FDR’s “nameless, unjustified, unreasoning terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” So when Franklin Roosevelt worked to overcome fear in America, Trump has worked to restore it mightily to his own advantage, but to the disadvantage of his countrymen.